Cruel Father- Fanny Coffey (VA) 1918 Sharp C, Sharp MS
[My title, after "Cruel Father' broadside. First stanza in EFFSA as Brisk Young Lover- C, the remainder from Cecil Sharp Manuscript Collection (at Clare College, Cambridge) (CJS2/10/4230). As pointed out in Recentering Anglo/American Folksong: Sea Crabs and Wicked Youths by Roger Dev Renwick, this ballad is not the same as Roud 60 Brisk Young Sailor/Lover. It is a related ballad I call "Cruel Father" in which her lover is sent to sea by her cruel father and dies by a cannonball. The opening appears in other versions and is possibly derived from “Nelly's Constancy; or, Her Unkind Lover:"
I lov'd you dearly, I lov'd you well,
I lov'd you dearly, no tongue can tell.
The same opening occurs in the related I love You Jamie, a Scottish variant. As far as I know Sharp C, it's the only reasonably complete version of this ballad in North America. Other variants just mention the father and the cannonball but do not present a ballad story.
R. Matteson 2017]
[The Cruel Father]- Sharp C, sung by Fanny Coffey of White Rock, Nelson County, Virginia on May 8, 1918.
O Saro, Saro, I love you well[1],
I love you better than tongue can tell.
I love you better than the price of gold.
What makes you frown on me so cold?
When her old father came this to know
That his daughter loved young Willie so,
He pressed this young man away on sea,
And blamed the world for its cruelty.
When this young lady came this to hear,
She wrung her hands, tore down her hair,
She ran upstairs, no more she spoke
And hung herself on her own bed-rope.
When her old father came home that night.
He enquired for his daughter bright.
He ran upstairs, the rope he broke,
And he found her hanging on her own bed-rope.
He took his knife and he cut her down,
And on her bosom those lines he found:
O father, judge this against no man,
For it's wrought with blood by your own daughter's hand.
Go dig my grave both wide and deep,
Put a marble stone at my head and feet,
And o'er my grave a little dove
To prove to the world that I died for love.
1. This stanza, resembling the opening of Nelly's Constancy and other related ballads, is misplaced and corrupt. Saro is usually a female and she should be "Oh Willie, oh Willie, I loved you well. . ."